26 July

140
LENIN MISCELLANY

ON MOBILIZING FORCES FOR THE STRUGGLE AGAINST WRANGEL

ANNOTATION ON THE DRAFT DIRECTIVE OF THE CC RCP(b) WRITTEN BY I. V. STALIN

26 July 1920

I am for i m m e d i a t e distribution, as an indisputable matter.

Lenin

DRAFT BY COMRADE STALIN

TO ALL PARTY ORGANIZATIONS

(Circular)

According to our information, a group of experienced desperate cutthroats-generals has gathered around Wrangel, who will stop at nothing.

Wrangel's soldiers are consolidated into units excellently, fight desperately, and prefer suicide to surrender as prisoners.

Technically, Wrangel's forces are equipped better than ours; the shipment from the West of tanks, armored vehicles, aircraft, ammunition, uniforms continues to this day, despite England's declaration of cessation of supplies.

The weakness of our forces fighting against Wrangel consists in the following: first, they are diluted with prisoners of war, former Denikin men, who frequently desert to the enemy side, and secondly, they receive from the center neither in groups nor singly volunteers or mobilized Communists.

It is necessary to purge these forces of former prisoners of war and regularly supply them with large contingents of volunteers or mobilized Communists, in order to create a turnaround in them and give them the possibility of defeating the most fierce enemy.

Crimea must be returned to Russia at all costs, because, otherwise, Ukraine and the Caucasus will always be threatened from the side of enemies of Soviet Russia.

The CC obliges you to intensify mass agitation in the spirit of the present circular letter and immediately organize the dispatch to the Crimean Front of volunteer Communists and non-party members.

The CC RCP(b)

Printed from typewritten copy.

1920

TELEGRAM TO I. V. STALIN

2 August 1920

Urgent. By cipher

To Stalin

We have just carried through in the Politburo a division of fronts so that you devote yourself exclusively to Wrangel. In connection with uprisings, especially in the Kuban, and then in Siberia, the danger of Wrangel is becoming enormous, and within the CC there is growing a striving to immediately conclude peace with bourgeois Poland. I ask you very attentively to discuss the situation with Wrangel and give your conclusion. With the Commander-in-Chief I have arranged that he will give you more ammunition, reinforcements, and aircraft. Dzerzhinsky together with his friends has founded the Polish Rev Com and issued a manifesto.

Lenin

NOTE TO D. I. KURSKY

July 1920

Have measures been taken for the i m m e d i a t e (1) establishment of Soviet power in liberated areas; (2) convening of c o n g r e s s e s of Soviets; (3) expulsion of landowners, distribution of part of their lands to the peasant poor, the rest to Soviets of farm laborers?

RESOLUTION ON A NOTE FROM THE SECRETARY

July 1920

Two comrades are waiting in the reception room, brought
To Comproduct   from Azerbaijan with a mandate from Nari-
for children      manov. At your disposal 6 carloads of caviar. Awaiting
your instructions.

* D. I. Kursky informed V. I. Lenin of a report received in the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic from the Western Front that the offensive of the 15th Army was developing successfully, the Poles were retreating (5 guns were captured, 20 thousand poods of hay, carloads of automotive equipment and other trophies). In Minsk Province—uprisings; partisan fighters threw five trains off the rails.